Dec 11, 201701:24PM

As everyone knows by now, Mesa PD engaged in a game of "Simon Says" combined with "Twister" involving short barreled rifles with a completely innocent citizen, and blew him away when he wiggled wrong.

I'd like to address some obvious failures in the procedure the department devised.

EDIT: And first, why did they assume a report of "Man with a rifle aiming it" was 100% accurate? The person could be mistaken as to if it was a gun, if it was being pointed, and it assumes pure intent on their part, not intent to have someone shaken down because the caller doesn't like guns. And people have previously died under those conditions.

Now, every competent cop on the planet, most veterans with training in house clearing, and anyone with a brain knows that you want to detain and control a suspect quickly. The longer a dance goes on, the more the risk of something happening to someone.

Ideally, you have the suspect prone out, cover him will someone else cuffs him, then search for weapons. You can also have him lean against a wall or car. A competent officer can even do it alone. It's certainly safer if you have two or more. One covers, one restrains.

Mesa came up with some bizarre dance where the suspect lies prone, hands on head, crosses his legs, kneels up, gets shouted at for using his hands, puts his hands straight up in the air, is told to keep them there while somehow crawling, then gets his brains blown out. This process takes five minutes and endangers bystanders.

What would have happened if someone else came out of a hotel room or around the corner of the corridor? What would have happened if those fired rounds had penetrated thin hotel walls and killed someone else?

The answer, of course, is that Mitch the Bitch Brailsford would have walked away from two or more murders, not just one.

So, Option One, as discussed: One officer covers, one approaches, cuffs, then searches. There are finer points to this, but that's the basics.

Option Two: If you are really terrified of this subject, you have him remain motionless while the second officers (and they had six) takes a wide arc around. In a hotel hallway, you could even have one or more officers go down a floor, up another stairwell, and approach from behind. Problem solved.

There's two failures of training or ability for a simple procedure that is done literally thousands of times per day.

Failures in the order process: I heard a statement that the changing positions are deliberately designed to keep the subject confused. That's wrong.

What if the subject is of low intellect?

What if he is intoxicated?

What if he is hard of hearing?

What if he was just clocked in the head in whatever engagement you are responding to, and is not cognizant?

What if he is mentally ill?

What if he's just terrified of weapons pointed at him and unable to track other matters?

Well, I guess nothing, if your intent is to find a reason to murder someone.

Now, what if the subject has an injured or incapacitated arm and can't raise his hand into one of these positions?

I guess you have another reason to make his children orphans.

Then you want him to cross legs, then somehow kneel.

Fun fact: There are a lot of people who can't kneel. Bad knees, bad ankles, poor balance.

Once again you get to make a brain salad.

Then you want them to crawl, with an implication to keep their hands above their head (it was never stated he should move his hands after he was told to "keep them there or we will kill you") that is not stated. This is an impossible command to follow. As stated, it's impossible. As implied, it's not as stated.

I can deduce exactly how this entire idiotic procedure came about. They probably rehearsed it. They had someone play the subject, talked them through the process, and determined it was feasible.

The problems would be: That actor did not have loaded rifles pointed at their head.

That actor would be quickly familiar with the routine after seeing it or rehearsing it.

That actor was probably another cop, physically fit, well-rested, and not confused, terrified or hindered in any way that would complicate matters.

This is a legitimate example of "privilege." The rehearsal involved fit, aware, competent individuals with no hindrances given to them by nature or the situation.

When you put an actual victim in there, intoxicated, terrified, innocent, who realizes his pants are slipping down and, per our cultural mores, tries to correct that moral problem, it means he moves in a way that poor little Mitch the Bitch, armored, armed, with his custom "You're Fucked" rifle and his awesome tattoos, just itching to blow someone away, gets his lifelong ambition. And gets to claim that he and his five buddies were just terrified to death of this prone guy in shorts.

Then the pig, the department and the city get to shrug and say, "Well, it works perfectly in simulation. We don't know what went wrong here. Good police work, though."

My analysis of this bizarre dance is that it was deliberately designed to offer the maximum opportunity for incompetence, error and murder.

And no one with any sense of self preservation should ever enter the city limits of Mesa. You have better odds in Vegas. Mesa doesn't have a police department. They have a murder squad.